Digital Libraries
INFO 653
iSchool at Drexel
College of Information Science and Technologies
Drexel University
Summer, 2011
Time: Online
Classroom: Drexel.Blackboard.com
Instructor: Xia Lin, Ph.D.
Office: Room 415, Rush Building
Office Hours: by appointments only
Telephone: 215-895-2482
Email: xlin@drexel.edu
Homepage: http://project.cis.drexel.edu/~xlin/
1. Course Description
This is a course on the emerging field of Digital Libraries. The course serves as an introduction
and overview to the research, development, application and practice of digital libraries. Topics to
be covered include foundations and architectures of digital libraries, technologies of digital
libraries, management and organization of digital resources, knowledge representations and
discovery, metadata and standards, intellectual property rights, etc.
2. Course Objectives
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To acquire the knowledge and understanding of major issues constituting the basis of
digital libraries.
To identify and discuss major issues in the development and management of digital
libraries.
To develop an understanding of major metadata standards and schemas used in digital
libraries
To study and evaluate various digital libraries and digital collections
To prepare students to work productively and creatively in digital libraries and related
digital information environment.
3. Textbook and Reading Materials
There will be no required textbooks. Most of the readings are online, such as
D-lib Magazine, http://www.dlib.org/,
CLIR,
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/
First Monday, http://www.firstmonday.dk/
Many others are on Drexel University Library's Electronic Resources.
A recommended textbook is: Digital Libraries by William Arms. Its e-book version is
available at: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/wya/DigLib
4. Presentation and Evaluation
The course is run as a seminar when it is offered on campus. Class participation is emphasized.
Every student must contribute to class discussion and presentation. For the first few weeks, each
student will report his/her research on an assigned topic or project. Everyone will join the
discussion of all the topics/projects. Each student will also select a topic to write a research paper
as the term paper. The distribution of grading is as follows:
Three short papers
30%
Two exercises
20%
Class participation
15%
Final term paper
35%
5. Academic Honesty
Please make sure that you have read and understand the University Academic Honesty Policy
(http://www.drexel.edu/studentlife/judicial/honesty.html). You are encouraged to discuss
homework assignments and class materials with other students, but all the work submitted for
grades must be your own and for this class only. The instructor reserves the right to use Turnitin
(available within Blackboard) or other plagiarism prevention software to check students’
assignments and papers.
In order to raise awareness about academic dishonesty, the College now requires all the students
to include a statement to deliverables (for example: papers, projects, exams) indicating that the
work submitted is their own. The following is a sample language that can be used :
I certify that:
This paper/project/exam is entirely my own work.
I have not quoted the words of any other person from a printed source or a website without
indicating what has been quoted and providing an appropriate citation.
I have not submitted this paper / project to satisfy the requirements of any other course.
Signature: __________________________
Date:
____________________
========================================================
Please make sure you include the above language with all your submissions.
Course Outline and Readings
Summer, 2011
Week 1. Introduction and Overview of Digital Libraries
What is a digital library?
What is not a digital Library?
Required Reading:
 Akst, D. (2003). The digital library: It’s future has arrived. Carnegie Reporter.
 President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (2001). Digital
Libraries: Universal Access to Human Knowledge – Report to the President
 Kuny, T. & Cleveland, G. (1996). The Digital Library: Myths and Challenges.
IFLA Conference paper.
 Borgman, C. L. (1999). What are digital Libraries -- Competing Visions,
Information Processing & Management, 35(3), 227-243.
 Nunberg, G. (2009). Google’s Book Search: A disaster for scholars. The
Chronicle of Higher Education. August 31, 2009.
 Rothman, D. H. (2011). It’s time for a national digital library system. The
Chronicle Review. http://chronicle.com/article/Its-Time-for-a-National/126489/
Recommended Reading:
 Arms, Williams. Digital Libraries. Chapters 1-2.
 Borgman, Christine. From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure.
Chapters 1-2
 Digital Libraries: Definitions, Issues and Challenges
Week 2. Vision and History of Digital Libraries
Digital Libraries: History and vision
DLI & DLI2, NSDL Projects
Required Reading:
 Bush, V. (1945). “As We May Think” The Atlantic Monthly. 176(1), 101-108.
 Mischo, W. H. (2005). Digital Libraries: Challenges and influential work. D-Lib
Magazine, July/August 2005.
 Arms, Williams. Digital Libraries. Chapter 4: Innovation and Research
 TED Video (20 minutes): Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_library.html
 DPLA – Digital Public Library of America
Recommended Reading:
 NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july98/07griffin.html
 Google Book Digitization Project (2004)
o The Infinite Library
 Greenstein and Thorin (2002). The Digital Library: A Biography
System Exploration: Memex Prototype
Week 3. Metadata and Foundations of Digital Libraries
Metadata
Digital Library Manifesto
Required:
 Metadata Made Simpler (2001)
 Introduction to Metadata (online edition , version 3.0, 2008)
 What is a Digital Library Anymore, Anyway? (D-Lib Magazine, Nov. 2005,
doi:10.1045/november2005-lagoze)
 Digital Library as Network and Community Center (D-Lib Magazine, Dec. 2006,
doi:10.1045/december2006-manduca)
 Setting the Foundations of Digital Libraries, (D-Lib Magazine, March/April,
2007).
Recommended:
 Arms, Williams. Digital Libraries. Chapter 10: Information Retrieval and
Descriptive Metadata
 A Service Framework for Libraries (D-Lib Magazine, July/August, 2006)
System Exploration: IPL Digital Library
Week 4. Architecture and Systems of Digital Libraries
Digital Objects and DOI
Digital Library Architectures
Distributed Models of digital libraries
Required Reading:
 Erickson, John. "Digital Object Identifier", In McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science &
Technology 2003.
 DOI: A 2003 Progress Report (D-Lib Magazine, June, 2003. DOI:
10.1045/june2003-paskin).
 An Architecture for Information in Digital Libraries (D-Lib Magazine, Feb. 1997)
 Brogan, M. Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library (DLF
Report, November 2006).
 Goncalves, MA, Fox, EA, Watson, LT, et al. (2004). Streams, structures, spaces,
scenarios, societies (5S): A formal model for digital libraries. ACM Transactions
of Information Systems, 22 (2): 270-312.
Recommended Reading:
 Arms, Williams. Digital Libraries. Chapter 12: Object Models, Identifiers, and
Structural Metadata.
 A Metadata Architecture for Digital Libraries (1998)
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DSpace: An Open Source Dynamic Digital Repository (D-Lib Magazine, January,
2003. DOI: 10.1045/january2003-smith).
Fedora Architecture: http://www.fedora.info/
System exploration: DSpace
Week 5. Content Organizations in the Digital Space
Indexing & knowledge representation
KOS, ontology and topic maps
Required Reading:
 Hodge, G. (2000). Systems of Knowledge Organization for Digital Libraries:
Beyond Traditional Authority Files.
 The TAO of Topic Maps
 NKOS – Networked Knowledge Organization Systems
 SKOS, http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/
Recommended Reading:
 Wrightson, A. (2001). Topic maps and Knowledge Representations
 Arms, C., and Arms, W. "Mixed Content and Mixed Metadata: Information
Discovery in a Messy World." In Metadata in Practice, edited by D. Hillmann
and E. Westbrooks, ALA Editions, 2004.
System Exploration: Drupal
Week 6. Digital Collections and its Evaluation
Defining digital collections
Building digital collections
Evaluating digital collections
Required Reading:
 Defining Collections in Distributed Digital Libraries (1998).
 Smith, A. (2001). Strategies for Building Digitized Collections.
 CDL Guides for Digital Objects (2007).
 Atkinson, R. “Library functions, scholarly communication, and the foundation of
the digital library: laying claim to the control zone.” Library Quarterly, 66(3),
239-265. 1996.
 Emerging tools for evaluating digital library services: Conceptual adaptations of
LibQUAL+ and CAPM (Journal of Digital Information, 4(2), June, 2003).
Recommended Reading:
 Building Digital Collections: Technical Information and Background Papers
(Library of Congress)
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NISO (2007). A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections
(3rd edition).
Digital Library Content and Course Management Systems: Issues of
Interoperation. (DLF Report, July, 2004).
System Exploration: Fedora
Week 7. Access and User Interfaces to Digital Libraries
Resource discovery and searching
Interface design
Search and access interfaces
Information visualization
Required Reading:
 Paepcke, A.(1996). Digital Libraries: Searching Is Not Enough. D-Lib Magazine,
May 1996.
 Smith, A. G. (2000) Search features of digital libraries. Information Research,
5(3)
 Bates, Marcia J. (2002). The cascade of interactions in the digital library interface.
Information Processing & Management, 38(3), 381-400.
 Martin, R. S. (2003). Reaching across Library Boundaries. In: Emerging Visions for
Access in the Twenty-first Century Library. (CLIR report &CDL Conference
Proceedings).
 Manduca, C. A.; Iverson, E. R.; & Fox, S. (2005). Influencing user behavior
through digital library design (D-lib Magazine, May, 2005).
 Arko, R. A.; Ginger, K. M.; Kastens, K. A.; & Weatherley, J. (2006). Using
Annotations to add value to a digital library for education. (D-lib Magazine, May,
2006).
Recommended Reading:
 User-centered iterative design for digital libraries (D-Lib Magazine, Feb. 1996).
 An Atlas of Cyberspaces --Information Space Maps
 National Research Council. More than Screen Deep: Toward Every-Citizen
Interfaces to the Nation's Information Infrastructure, 1996: (Read at least the
Executive Summary).
 CDL user interface principles.
System Exploration: Visual Concept Explorer
Week 8. Social Factors of Digital Libraries
Copyrights & Open access
Security, privacy, and Intellectual property
Digital Preservation
Required Reading:
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Copyright in the Digital Library
Besek, June. Copyright Issues Relevant to the Creation of a Digital Archive: A
Preliminary Assessment.
Digital Rights Management and the Break Downs of Social Norms (FirstMonday:
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1097/1017
)
Copyright issues in Open Access Research Journals. (D-Lib Magazine, Feb.
2006)
Jantz, R. & Giarlo, M. J. (2005). Digital Preservation: Architecture and
Technology for Trusted Digital Repositories. (D-Lib Magazine, June 2005).
Recommended Reading:
 Statement of Senator Brownback on introducing the Consumers, Schools, and
Libraries Digital Rights Management Act of 2003.
 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
(2003)
 DRM and Privacy (Cohen, Julie E. “The Law and Technology of Digital Rights
Management: DRM and Privacy.” Berkeley Technology Law Journal 18 (Spring
2003) : 575-617).
 Transitions in Intellectual Property for Digital Libraries
 Copyright Law for the Digital Library: A Bibliography (Sept. 2003 version)
 The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998
 Intellectual Property Digital Library
 Preservation risk management for Web resources (D-Lib Magazine, Jan. 2002).
 National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program
System Exploration: Greenstone Digital Library Software
Week 9. Digital Librarians
Users' needs and long tail
Digital librarians
Required Reading:
 Coleman, A.; & Sumner, T. (2004). Digital Libraries and User Needs: Negotiating
the Future. Journal of Digital Information, 5(3),
http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/119/123 .
 Covey, Denise. Usage and Usability Assessment: Library Practices and Concerns.
CLIR 105, 2002.
 The Long Tail (Wikipedia).
 Dempsey, L. Libraries and the long tail. (D-Lib Magazine, April, 2006).
 Choi, Y. & Rasmussen, E. (2006). What do digital librarians do? JCDL 2006,
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Choi, Y. & Rasmussen, E. (2006). What is Needed to Educate Future Digital
Librarians (D-Lin Magazine, Sept. 2006).
Marion, L. (2001). “Digital Librarian, Cybrarian, or Librarian with Specialized
Skills: Who Will Staff Digital Libraries?” Crossing the Divide: Proceedings of the
Tenth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries.
Denver, Colorado, March 15-18, 2001), pp143-149. [The first version of this article
was developed in this class].
Recommended Reading:
 Hastings, K. & Tennant, R. (1996). How to Build a Digital Librarian. D-Lib
Magazine, November 1996.
 Steele, C.; Guha, M. (1999). “Staffing the Digital Library in the 21st Century”.
 Tennant, R. (1998). “The Most Important Management Decision: Hiring Staff for
the New Millennium”. Library Journal, February 15, 1998.
 Tennant, R. (2002). “Digital Libraries – The Digital Librarian Shortage”. Library
Journal, March 15, 2002.
System Exploration: MediaWiki.org
Week 10. Future of Digital Libraries
Semantic Digital Libraries
Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and Digital Libraries 2.0
Required Reading:
 The national Centre for Text Mining: A Vision for the Future (Ariadne Magazine,
2007).
 Larsen, R. L. & Wactlar, H. D. (2003). “Knowledge Loss in Information”, final
report of NSF Workshop on research directions for digital libraries.
 McDermott, R. (1999) Why information technology inspired but cannot deliver
knowledge management; California Management Review, 41(3), 103-118 Summer
1999. (PDF file for this document is in this week’s notes folder).
Recommended Reading/Resources:
 Lesk, M.E., How much information is there?
http://www.lesk.com/mlesk/ksg97/ksg.html
 Digital Collections, Digital Libraries and the digitization of cultural heritage
information. (First Monday, May 2002).
 Digital Talking Books
System Exploration: JeromeDL – Semantic Digital Library